Another goals list! I love reading these posts on other blogs, but personally, I love writing them because it motivates me so much! We have so many ideas for things to do in the house, but we’re also going to keep it realistic. During the course of the year, we’re going to have a 3 year old and a 1 year old living here, so I’m sure it’ll be crazy, but I’m also looking forward to finding our new groove in life as a family of 4 (6! with doggies).

While I’d love to say the KITCHEN was number 1 on my list, it’s sadly not going to happen this year. Our budget won’t accommodate it this year, but hopefully soon. Our life has taken some interesting turns that we didn’t originally plan for (me not earning a paycheck anymore) so we have to alter our game plan a bit. Mainly though, we’re trying to take advantage of the unique situation we have of us ALL being home, and David being able to work from anywhere. So we’re really eyeing up some travel and vacations this year while we all have this time together and before Connor heads off to school in a few years. Family time is really the priority this year 🙂

But, while family time is the priority, we couldn’t get through this year without some home project fun. It’s a great outlet for David and I to dream, design, and execute all these projects around the house together.

So this year, we’re going to focus on some smaller projects, ones that we didn’t finish last year, and also maybe planning for a bigger one next year!

Built ins

Ok, so this is a carryover from our 2018 home projects lists. Guilty. BUT, we’ve really been excited about getting these done. We have the base cabinets installed and painted. We have the TV bought and mounted on the wall. We’ve planned out where the shelving will be.

Now, I’m just waiting on some warmer and nicer weather to take all of the cabinet doors and counter top outside to paint using our new paint sprayer. Rolling cabinet doors is no joke (we did our entire SC kitchen this way!), so I’m really looking forward to getting a super smooth finish with the paint sprayer.

Once that’s all finished and we’ll finalize the shelving plans and buy/cut/paint all of that wood. I’ve also been on the hunt for the perfect overhead lighting (or library sconces as I’ve realized they’re called.

Family Room Curtains

Ok, also a carryover from 2018. BUT. I’m totally adding it to this list, because I FINALLY finished them. In 2019. So it totally counts. More details coming soon, so that I can share what a headache these have been for me (2 years in the making!).

Mini Dining Room Makeover

Last year when I was pregnant with Layla, Connor went to his Grandparent’s house one weekend, and David was doing a lot of molding work in Layla’s nursery that didn’t really involve me too much. So I took advantage of that free time to do a mini makeover on our kitchen. It wasn’t much work but it made the WORLD of a difference to me. I still have to share this project, but it really inspired me to tackle a mini makeover on our poop colored dining room this year. I’m excited, I have a dark, moody green/blue in mind and can’t wait to experiment with it!

Staircase/Foyer Completion

So I think this will probably be the only flooring project we aim to do this year. The hallway floor upstairs is done, and the foyer flooring is done, so the ugly carpeting connecting the two areas on the stairs has GOT TO GO. We think it’s going to be a decent project to install the wood treads and risers so we’re trying to not get too ambitious. We’ll see what surprises it has in store for us.

Also, in the foyer area, I’m brainstorming some guest coat hooks and a bench setup to make it a bit more visitor friendly. Although, I feel like, that no matter what system you have in place, people tend to come in and just set stuff down in your kitchen anyway haha.

Master Closet/Bathroom Planning

This one is going to be our stretch this year. The way our house is laid out, calls for some unused space behind our master closet walls. Long term, we were hoping to reconfigure it to relocate the master closet to make our master bathroom bigger. It was always something we envisioned doing once the kids were a lot older, but the more we talk about it, the more we want to treat ourselves and give ourselves a “retreat”. Because, really, these younger years are when you need a retreat place the most. We’ve done so many projects for them, their bedrooms and the playroom, that we really want to do something that is 100% for us. And we want the time to enjoy it before we’re old haha.

It’s hard to explain the whole thing without going into diagrams, design, and floor plans, but I’ll be explaining a lot more in an upcoming blog post. The awesome thing about it though, is that we were chatting with our neighbors (who have the same style house as us, just backwards) about this idea and they had already done it! Here we were, thinking we were brilliant. So, we still need to tour their place and take a bunch of pictures, but it will be so cool to see it already completed and how maybe we might want to do it differently.

Overall, we just want to come up with a plan, design, and get some estimates to see what this kind of projects is going to run us.

Garage Organization

This is a MUST for my sanity. Literally half of the garage looks awful, and everything is just thrown in there. We’re really hoping when the weather gets better, that we can just have a fun weekend outside in the driveway with the kids while purging and tackling this reorganization. We’ll see. But I’m determined to get this cleaned up and less hectic.

Did that corny title grab your attention to this blog post? I thought so. 😀

After we finished taking the wall down between our living room and family room, to make one big room, I had my eyes set upon the kitchen. We have lived here for a little over 2 years now and we have a pretty good idea of what we really want and need for our future kitchen renovation.

So, what did you think of first when you read that title? Harry Potter or Howl at the Moon? I think your answer would probably tell me a lot about you. 🙂

How do you feel about home offices? I have a love/hate relationship with them. They’re useful in being able to wrangle up a bunch of adulting things like bills and taxes, and give you a work space to take care of it all. But, really, when it comes to actually working, I just like to leave work at work and not have to worry about the lines ever crossing.

We have this hallway/laundry room/pantry off of the kitchen area which was in dire need of some organization. I talked a little about it in this post, including how we don’t know what the long term plan is for it. To give you a bit of a refresher, here is a zoomed in part of the floor plan that shows what I’m talking about.

The “closet” shown is just a bump-out in this hallway, as it is a closet for the guest bedroom. The washer and dryer sit next to it, and there’s a little (big?) hidden gem on the opposite side of wall behind two swinging doors, as seen below.